It is a city of screaming neon
the horses of urban vacancies
are in full gallop. The
GAIT,
STRIDE, HEAVY PRANCE
over the bloody scree. Hoofbeat-like
electric feet STUMBLE in jaded
auricles. Can you hear the
NOISY illumination of
lunar barricades? Even at night it’s a
city of tenebrous light; just as BRIGHT
as our stellar eyes looking dark
against gloomy fluorescence. This is going
to have to be your typical
city-dweller song,
out of tune, with B R O K E N quarter notes,
while we wait for our brains running
CHORD CHANGES in the void. Whenever we
woke up, we were witnesses to the
maddest race
for what mad unidentifiable trophy
nobody knows…………………
San Francisco (1987)
From: Crosswalk Casserole
Summary
“BLACK LIGHT” by Michael C. Ford is a poem centered on place and geography, music, social justice. Its imagery is anchored in San Francisco. The poem develops its subject through recurring images and shifts in emotional pressure rather than reducing the experience to a single statement.
Analysis
Voice
The poem uses direct address, creating an intimate and sometimes confrontational relationship with its subject.
Style and form
The poem is musically inflected, line-driven, typographically emphatic. The poem moves by accumulation: images, references, and tonal turns build on one another, so meaning emerges from their relationships as much as from narrative sequence.
Themes and imagery
Its strongest thematic currents include place and geography, music, social justice, nature. Concrete images give those abstractions physical weight, while changes in diction and pace keep the poem from settling into a single emotional register.
Reading the poem
A productive way to read “BLACK LIGHT” is to watch how its images change function as the poem progresses. Details that initially establish scene or memory become emotional evidence. The result is a poem whose argument is carried through association, rhythm, and image as much as through explicit statement.
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Source & rights
Source: Crosswalk Casserole (Lawn Gnome Publishing, First Edition, 2013)
Rights: © 2013 Lawn Gnome Publishing. All rights reserved.